Change Me
by Rockstarlet
Summary: Doctor John JD Dorian breathes a breath of fresh air when his overpowering mentor Doctor Cox leaves him to his own devices. With so much freedom, JD's left wondering if he ever wants Cox to return. The question is: will he be able to?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I'm just going to post this first chapter as it is to see if I get any feedback. If you read it and like it, please tell me so I can add more :) **

As a doctor, it's important to be adaptable to change. Personally, I feel I have a certain talent when it comes to dealing with big changes.

'I take to change like a fish to water,' I assure my close friend and fellow doctor, Elliot Reid, leaning on the counter of the nurse's station and smiling confidently, 'I'm like a bird taking to the sky, a raindrop taking to the ocean-'

'An idiotically grinning face taking to this clipboard?' Asks the familiar voice of Doctor Perry Cox.

'What?' I ask, turning to him and being met in the idiotically grinning face by the inevitable and infamous clipboard.

'Ow!' I exclaim, clutching my left cheek.

'Guess so,' Doctor Cox grins cruelly before taking a pen from his coat pocket and adding a note to a patient's chart, still chuckling to himself, 'Cracks me up,' I hear him mutter, 'Gets me every time.'

I glare at his back and rub my smarting face.

'I'm going to have a bruise there in the morning,' I tell Elliot pathetically, 'I bruise like a peach!'

She ignores me and continues to scribble in the medical chart that I've been distracting her from.

'So yeah,' I say, starting from where I left off, 'I take to change like a fish to water.'

'JD!' she snaps, her voice piercing and stressed, 'Why are you telling me this?'

'Because this morning I used a new brand of hair mousse,' I smile nonchalantly, my head cocked to one side, 'And I'm okay with it.'

She stares at me, her mouth contorted in what I can only guess is a mixture of annoyance and disbelief.

'Your hair looks exactly the same!' She cries.

'Ah,' I smile knowingly, 'See that's the thing, this brand gives slightly more volume so that-'

'Come on there, Margaret,' says Doctor Cox, reappearing from nowhere and hauling me away from Elliot by the scruff of my neck, 'Or do you prefer Maggie?'

Doctor Perry Cox is what you might call my mentor. In a strange, roundabout way, we rely on each other to function properly in our lives at Sacred Heart Hospital. I don't mean to sound sappy, but we need each other. I know, for certain, that he will always be here to call me a girl's name, expose me to some unwanted violence and occasionally make me feel like a semi-decent doctor.

'Okay, Newbie, listen up,' he says, 'I'm heading out of town for a couple days and, puh-lease take note, while I'm gone I would like _all_ of my patients to continue to keep,' he pauses and puts his face a little closer to mine, 'Living,' he finishes.

'But I'm a little-' I try to ask.

'Woah there, Linda,' he interrupts me, his eyes wide, 'You'd better say teapot, because you do _not_ know the meaning of the word "busy".'

He doesn't wait for a reply, and instead fixes me with a stern stare before charging past me, headed for the wards and growling quietly under his breath.

'So when-?' I try again.

'Today, darling, today,' he calls sarcastically over his shoulder.

'And why-?' I attempt.

'None of your damn business,' I hear him shout before he turns a corner and disappears from view.

I toss my newly volumised hair and turn my back on him.

'I am _not_ a little teapot,' I inform Laverne, a nurse not famous for her patience with me.

'Mhm,' she replies, one eyebrow raised in my direction.

I drop my gaze to the floor, 'Aw, come on, I'm a medium-sized teapot at least.'

As the day goes on, I begin to realise exactly how beautiful embracing change can be. Without Doctor Cox breathing down my neck, I'm free for the first time in a long time to do things my way.

'I'm Doctor Dorian,' I tell that day's new patients, smiling reassuringly.

'_Feel free to call Lucy here by her first name_,' I hear Doctor Cox butt in, the way he always does, only this time the only person who hears him is me. There is nobody around to lecture me infront of my patients and my interns, or to criticise every medical decision I make.

I sit down at a table in the hospital canteen where my best friend Chris Turk, his wife Carla and Elliot are already sitting with a broad grin on my face. They all look up at me with the same sympathetic, almost pitying expression. Carla reaches out and gently pats my hand with hers.

'Hey Bambi, how you holding up?' She asks kindly.

'We heard about Doctor Cox,' Turk adds, concern clear in his voice.

'Are you okay?' Elliot asks, her blue eyes round with worry.

I beam at them all, oblivious to their odd reactions.

'Okay?' I ask, 'I'm great!'

Their eyes widen as one.

'Really?' Carla asks.

'Now I get to do everything _my_ way,' I tell them, 'I love change. Did you know that? Change is my new favourite thing. In fact, just this morning-'

'Oh, JD, don't start with the hair mousse again!' Elliot complains.

I halt mid-sentence.

'Fine,' I reply haughtily, my nose in the air, 'I will find someone who isn't afraid of change like you guys.'

I lift my lunch tray and flounce away across the room.

A moment later I'm back.

'You chickens,' I add, scathingly.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thank you for the reviews; they made my day :) Also, I corrected that mistake about "Christ Turk". Made me giggle though.**

There's nothing worse than that tug somewhere between your heart and your stomach which can only signal a very bad thought, especially when it's coupled with the realisation that you may have been a little hasty in following your tray of egg salad and pudding to greener pastures. I'm halfway to paediatrics, cradling my right hand – definitely bruised and probably broken from countless "egg salad fives" from Todd at lunch - when that feeling, somewhere between heartache and nausea, creeps up on me.

'You mean no one has even told him yet?'

Carla's indignant, slightly Spanish accented voice reaches my ears only too clearly. I pause, mid-step, and tilt my head to the side, listening intently.

'I cannot believe this!' She continues, 'Of all the things that he _needs_ to know, this is the most important one!'

'Well he obviously doesn't know, does he?' Elliot's voice chimes in, just as defensively, 'It's typical. It's just so typical that Doctor C-'

I slide up to the nurse's station, smooth as jello, and grin at them both.

'Whatcha talkin' about?' I ask sweetly.

They instantly smile back and, as though in practised unison, shrug their shoulders, put their heads on one side and reply: 'Nothing!'

I eye them suspiciously, but they are saved by the bell, or should I say, the telephone.

'Is there a Winona here?' Asks a nurse I don't recognise, as she casts her eyes around the room, 'There's a call for a Winona.'

I sigh and feel my shoulders sag a little.

'That's me,' I mutter.

She looks at me almost worriedly, 'No, I don't think-'

'Trust me, lady,' I assure her, and reach out for the handset.

'Ah, sweetums,' says Doctor Cox's voice from the end of the line, 'Glad you were back from the salon in time to take my call.'

'Hello Perry,' I say in my haughtiest voice, 'How's the weather where you are?'

'Blah blah blah – enough with the chit chat,' he replies, 'I know I said I would be back at the hospital today, but plans changed, so I won't be in until tomorrow. Think you can remember that?'

'Mmm,' I murmur obediently.

'Atta girl,' Cox says before hanging up the phone.

'Well I hope it's raining!' I retort and then slam the receiver down into its cradle. I pause for a second, lift the handset again and add, 'Really hard!'

When I go to lift the telephone for the third time, Carla puts a hand on my arm to stop me.

'JD?' She says, 'He's gone.'

I look down at my shoes, 'I know,' I sigh.

'Do you miss him?' She asks.

'No,' I reply, too quickly.

She looks at me with an expression that makes me want to know what she's thinking.

'Good,' she nods and gives me a half smile.  
As she turns to go, the words fall out of my mouth before I realise that I'm saying them.

'Do you think he misses me?' I ask in a rush.

She looks at me with that unreadable look on her face.

'I hope so,' is all that she says.

That night, my shift ends at seven and I stroll through the hospital with my jacket and backpack on to meet Turk, Elliot and Carla at the front desk. They're all waiting for me as I approach. I smile fondly to myself at my friends. My urban family. Just as I'm about to relay my sentimental thoughts to them on the subject, guaranteed to make Carla say 'Aww!', and possibly even make Elliot cry, the automatic doors at the front of the hospital slide open and Jordan walks in.

Jordan is Doctor Cox's ex-wife. They have a baby and, as far as I can tell, are very happy together, as long as they stay divorced. In my head, thunder rolls and lightning slices through the air whenever Jordan appears anywhere. I often wonder where she hides her broomstick. She nods in our general direction, which would seem like a polite gesture if you didn't know, as I do, that she is merely alerting the flying monkeys as to who her next chosen victims are. Elliot clearly doesn't know about the monkeys. She bounds up to Jordan and we, begrudgingly, follow.

'Hey Jordan!' Elliot grins enthusiastically.

'Oh look,' Jordan replies, 'It's the contents of the Mystery Machine. Here's a tip: it was either the creepy janitor, or the Mayor all along.'

Elliot either ignores her, or just plain doesn't get it. 'What are you doing here so late?' She asks instead.

'I needed to pick up some papers. We only just got home from New England and I'm exhausted. Perry insisted on dragging me round at least twenty different houses, half of which looked like something out of The Brady Bunch. They're all so perfect and bland. I don't know why he would even want to buy a house like that.'

I let out a snort of incredulous laughter, 'Why would Doctor Cox want to buy a house in New England?' I ask.

Jordan looks at me with an expression that says, 'You do the math, genius.'

Realisation dawns on me like a slap in the face. I look round at my friends. They all look back at me with the same worried and guilty expressions.

'You knew about this?' I ask them in disbelief.

I get no reply. We all know the answer anyway. Carla and Elliot's secret conversation and everybody's sad expressions at lunch begin to make sense.

'Why didn't he tell me?' I ask nobody in particular. Nobody answers.

I nod, even though I don't understand. I feel like an idiot.

'But JD,' Elliot says quickly, sounding desperate, 'This is just a change. You love change, remember? Change is your new favourite thing!'

Everybody in the group cringes visibly except Elliot. I turn away wordlessly and walk away towards the main doors of Sacred Heart.

'JD…' Turk says in a tired, sympathetic voice, trailing off to nothing because he knows form experience that it's no use.

'JD, wait!' I hear Carla and Elliot call after me.

'Gee,' Jordan says as I'm walking through the doors, so that I can hardly hear her, 'I almost feel bad for the kid.'


End file.
